BookishCub

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, BookishCub!

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 08:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

File:It Doesn't Have to Be This Way cover.jpg

Wikimedia Commons does not accept derivative works of non-free works such as File:It Doesn't Have to Be This Way cover.jpg. It only accepts free content, which is images and other media files that can be used by anyone, for any purpose. Reproductions of copyrighted works are also subject to the same copyright, and therefore this file must unfortunately be considered non-free. For more information, please read Commons:Derivative works and Commons:Freedom of panorama. You can ask questions about Commons policies in Commons:Help desk. The file you added has been deleted. If you believe that this file was not a derivative work of a non-free work, you may request undeletion.

Yours sincerely, Belbury (talk) 09:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Belbury. The image is of the first edition cover of a book that is in the publish domain and has been shared broadly by the publisher (Kwela Books) and broadly by a variety of journalists in many of South Africa’s daily newspapers. It is therefore not derivative. If this is not the correct way to upload an image that is a cover of a book, please let me know how I should go about doing so. BookishCub (talk) 09:51, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

You would need to show that the cover artwork is in the public domain. "Public domain" has a specific legal meaning, it does not just mean "has appeared in public". Book cover art being shared in promotional material and appearing in newspaper reviews is very common but does not mean that the artwork is public domain. Belbury (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

What if I used a low-res version of the image? Would the fair use rule for book covers apply? This rationale on the fraud use rule comes from another first edition book cover that was uploaded: “This image is of book cover(s), and the copyright for it is most likely owned either by the artist who created the cover(s) or the publisher of the book(s). It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of book covers

to illustrate an article discussing the book in question

on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,

qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, might be copyright infringement. See Wikipedia:Non-free content for more information.” BookishCub (talk) 19:00, 13 July 2023 (UTC)